


Proper Veneration of the Divine Feminine

by ComplicatedLight



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Fabulous badass witches, Gen, Lewis Fright Fest 2019, Paganism, The Great Goddess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 05:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21294572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComplicatedLight/pseuds/ComplicatedLight
Summary: If you had told Robbie and James that what they needed in their lives was a coven of witches, they'd have looked at you like you'd taken leave of your senses . . .
Relationships: James Hathaway & Robert Lewis
Comments: 28
Kudos: 60





	1. Thursday 20th February: Early afternoon

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been written (very quickly!) for Lewis Fright Fest. Confusingly, it's set at Imbolc, not Samhain. I thought it would be a 1000 word thing that would take me a couple of evenings to write. How wrong I was!
> 
> Only warnings are for a cannon-type murder case (no graphic descriptions) and some misogyny in the background

“Looks like she was a witch, sir.” 

“Hathaway! That’s no way to talk about the poor woman.” Mostly, Hathaway’s a pretty open-minded bloke, but there are moments when he can get judgemental. I suppose we all can. It’s not like him to use insults like that, though; it’s a bit of a shock to hear him calling Kathleen Compton, our new murder victim—killed by a blow to the side of the head in her garden yesterday evening—a witch. Particularly when he’s, quite rightly, had a go at me a couple of times about using what he calls _gendered derogatory terms_. 

“No, you misunderstand me, sir.” He’s stooped over an open drawer in a pine dresser in our victim’s kitchen. I wish he’d stand up straight; as someone who’s no stranger to back pain, I worry about what he’s doing to himself, trying to make himself smaller like that, or whatever the stooping’s about. He’s got some paperwork in his hand. “I’ve just found her membership of the Pagan Federation.”

_This is all we need_. “I’m not sure I want to know, Sergeant.” He doesn’t take pity on me.

“Pagans. Followers of a polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping religion. Big on the Divine Feminine. Some claim a rather fanciful unbroken link to pre-Christian religions.”

“Cranks, then?” A derogatory term, I know, but at least it’s an equal opportunities insult.

“Some are, I’m sure. But then all religions attract some oddities.”

I give him a look but say nothing. I suppose this Pagan thing explains the sculptures or statues or whatever they are that are dotted all round the flat. They range in size from a couple of inches high to about a foot or so, all naked female figures and all with a look of ancient goddess or fertility symbol or something like that. Most have large breasts and bellies; some even have genitals marked on them. But some look like old women, very old women, wizened and stooped over, like really spooky grandmothers. And some of the bigger ones have a crescent moon as a kind of headdress or crown on top of their heads. 

They’re not your run of the mill home decorations, that’s for sure, but they are strangely beautiful. They certainly don’t give me the willies like some Christian statues do—I really can’t be doing with those crucifixes with blood dripping down them. Some of the goddesses are clearly carved from stone and some look more like they’re made of pottery, and they’re all sorts of colours—a lot of grey and brown ones and a huge one on the window ledge in the kitchen that’s mostly black but mottled with streaks of white. There are figures in different shades of terracotta and rust and a group of very beautiful green-grey stone ones on a table in the hallway that look like they’ve been underwater for centuries. I pick one of the greenish ones up to have a closer look but it feels wrong, somehow, to be handling it. As I carefully put it back on its shelf I find myself silently apologising to it; to _her_.

Hathaway retrieves another sheet of paper from the drawer in the dresser. “OK. Definitely a Pagan. Five Ravens’ Coven. List of five names—all female—and phone numbers. Kathleen Compton is second on the list.”

“Who’s first?”

“A Jane Worricker.” He walks over to me while he taps the number into his mobile, then puts it on speakerphone, holding it between us. It rings three times before a warm, female voice with a southern accent says: 

“Hello. Professor Jane Worricker speaking.”

Hathaway’s gaze shoots up to mine. Clearly, neither of us were expecting our raven to be a professor.

He brings the phone up a little closer to his mouth. “_Professor_ Worricker. This is Detective Sergeant Hathaway from Oxfordshire Police. I need to talk to you about Kathleen Compton.”

* * *

Before we visit Professor Worricker, we look through the rest of the flat. SOCO have already gone over the place, taking photographs and dusting everything for prints. Now they’ve gone it’s our turn to slowly move through Kathleen Compton’s home, trying to get a feel for who she was, looking for something, a sign, a clue, something to help us understand what happened to her. Hathaway and I have done this together dozens, maybe hundreds of times, over the last five years. You don’t know what you’re looking for and it’s more about sensing than it is any thought out, logical process. In fact, it’s better if you switch your brain off. Well, that’s how it is for me—I don’t know how it works for Hathaway, switching off his brain, but he does OK with the detecting side of it, however he achieves it. In the past, he’s likened what we’re doing right now to divination and he’s not far wrong; and God knows this flat seems like the perfect place to hone our divination gifts. This is one of the bits of the job I really like. I mean, I hate that we have to do it, that this poor lass was murdered. But quietly moving through the place, treating yourself almost like an antenna trying to pick up signals, and hearing the floorboards creak in another room as Hathaway does the same—there are far worse bits of the job than this.

Frustratingly, we don’t divine anything that tells us why Kathleen Compton was murdered, but in the small spare bedroom at the back of the flat we do find an altar arranged on a dressing table. There’s a dark red cloth laid out with a star made of bound twigs in the centre. Hathaway informs me it’s a pentagram. Around it are candles and tiny vases of snowdrops. In the centre of the pentagram is one of the goddesses, about nine inches tall, carved from black stone. She’s wearing a crescent moon crown that’s been painted silver and she’s wearing a necklace of greenery. Propped up against her belly is what looks like a half-eaten piece of bread. All of this is surrounded by a circle made of up of tiny pebbles and sprigs of holly, the leaves still glossy green and dotted with red berries. It’s a spooky sight, in a way, but interesting. Hathaway certainly seems fascinated by it, judging by the way he’s bent over it, inspecting every element without touching anything. 

The rest of the room is filled with a sofa, which looks like it folds down into a bed, a nice rug, and a bookcase full of books with titles like _The Great Cosmic Mother_ and _Women Who Run with the Wolves_. It’s not like Hathaway to ignore the chance to rummage through some books, but he seems completely captivated by the altar.

“I wouldn’t have thought all this”—I wave my hand at the altar— “would sit well with you, as a Catholic? A bit too close to devil worship, isn’t it?”

He looks over his shoulder at me and frowns. “This has got nothing to do with the devil. Contemporary Pagans use the pentagram to represent the five elements: air, earth, fire, water, and spirit. Anyway, not everyone has to believe what I believe.”

He says this like I might have a bloody clue what he does believe. I will say this though, I might not have any time for the Church, and I don’t necessarily think it’s done my sergeant many favours, but I have always admired his open-mindedness, his ability to have strong opinions and beliefs but not assume he’s right or that other people are wrong.

He crouches down so he can look more closely at the objects on the altar. “I can appreciate sincere spiritual practice, which I’ve no doubt this represents. And you have to admit, on a purely aesthetic level, it is beautiful, isn’t it?” And with that he stands up straight and moves his head from side to side to stretch out his neck, grimacing a little as he does it. Then, looking a little reluctant, I think, he heads out of the room. I take one last look at the altar and follow him. 

As we close the front door to the flat behind us, something dawns on me. “It’s all about women, isn’t it? The Five Ravens are all women; the sculptures are all goddesses. Even the books. There’s something about women going on, isn’t there? I mean, men are conspicuous by their absence. There’s absolutely nothing that says male in this flat, is there? It’s very feminine. I don’t mean girly, with everything pink and frilly: maybe I mean”—I search for the right word— “_womanly_?”

Hathaway looks thoughtful. “Proper veneration of the Divine Feminine.” 

Sounds about right. “Is that a quote?” A lot of things are with him.

He looks surprised. “No, just what I felt in there.”

It’s not like Hathaway to throw the ‘f’ word around. We’re definitely onto something.


	2. Thursday 20th February: Late Afternoon

We know that Kathleen Compton died somewhere between eight and ten last night, and we know she died in the garden at the back of her ground floor flat in Jericho. Laura Hobson is confident she was killed by a single, brutal blow to the left side of the back of her head, by someone wielding a large, flat rock or similar—something with a hard, flat surface, anyway. Whatever it was, it’s not in her garden now, not that we can find. SOCO have gone over all the stone figures just in case one of them was the murder weapon, but again, there’s no indication at this stage that that’s the case. What we also know is that her assailant was taller than Kathleen and most probably male—or else a very strong woman, but I think the chances of that are slim. This is definitely about respect for women, veneration of the Devine Feminine as Hathaway put it . . . and whatever the opposite of that is. She was killed by a man alright—I’d stake my dwindling public sector pension on it.

We know that Kathleen lay out all night, face-down on the little square of lawn under the cherry tree at the far end of her garden, her face resting on the green shoots pushing their way up through the grass around the base of the tree. Hobson tells me the shoots are crocuses and that they’re a touch early for mid-February because we had that milder spell a few weeks ago. She also tells me there were stubs of candles in amongst the crocus shoots, though what, if anything, they’ve got to do with Kathleen’s death, I’ve no idea right now. Trails in the dew on the grass this morning showed that she was probably visited by a fox sometime in the early hours, something which I’ve been finding strangely comforting. I suppose I hate that murder victims are almost always alone in the first few hours after they die, which is daft—it’s not like it can make any difference to them at that stage. I must be getting soft or sentimental in my old age. Anyway, there were no footprints in the dew, which fits with Laura’s ruling on when the attack happened—pre the late night temperature dip. 

Kathleen was fully dressed and there was no sign of _funny business_, thank God. As far as we can see, she lived alone in a comfortable flat stuffed with books and plants and about forty goddess statues. I did ask Hathaway what the collective noun for goddesses might be. He did that thing he does where he tilts his head to one side and looks at me, unblinking, while he’s thinking. I’ve always found it difficult to look away when he does it, though I don’t know why. It’s not as if him retrieving something from the vast vaults of his memory, or putting two and two together to make the four that solves the case, depends on unwavering eye contact with me. Eventually, he offered me _A Blessing of goddesses_ as a suggestion, which I like, but I can’t seem to shake off _gaggle_— _A gaggle of goddesses_. Not that Kathleen Compton’s lot have anything geese-like about them. 

Kathleen was spotted by a neighbour at seven-thirty this morning as he looked out of his bathroom window while he brushed his teeth. No one saw or heard anything last night, though apparently the students in the house on the other side of Kathleen’s flat had some mates round for a bit of a noisy jam session, so that doesn’t necessarily rule out an altercation of some sort. That said, there’s no sign of a break-in or a struggle in the house. The door out to the garden was unlocked, though, so maybe she let her murderer into the flat and they both went out into the garden. Or maybe she was already out there and the murderer found her there, though if that’s the case, what she was doing out in the back garden on such a cold evening, I couldn’t say.

* * *

When we arrive at Jane Worricker’s office in the Department of Creative Technologies just off the Banbury Road, it’s obvious she’s been crying. She looks pale and sorrowful and her grey eyes are tinged with red. She’s also beautiful in a way that isn’t commonly viewed as beautiful these days, in that she’s in her late forties and has the lines around her eyes to prove it, and she’s soft and curvy instead of lean and thin. Her hair’s a brownish red and tied up in an untidy heap on top of her head. I’m not sure what I expected a witch professor to be like, but she’s lovely, and I can tell by the way Hathaway gets all formal that he’s thinking the same. She’s dressed in a pair of black jeans and a tailored, tweedy jacket the colour of moss, and she’s wearing big, clompy, black boots that I’m sure are very trendy. If anyone had ever asked me what I thought a witch would wear I’d have probably said something along the lines of a long black dress and lots of weird jewellery, but there’s no black dress in sight, and the only jewellery I can see on Jane Worricker is a small, silver ring on the middle finger of her right hand. She looks like an academic, albeit a fairly casual, down-to-earth one, not an extra from the Addams Family. And yet, knowing that she’s a witch—whatever that means—what she’s wearing also seems absolutely right, somehow.

Hathaway told her on the phone that Kathleen Compton is dead, but not that she was murdered. We hold off from telling her that for now. Instead, I just get the conversation going. “What is it you do here, Professor?”

She looks surprised to be asked about her work but seems happy enough to tell us. “We examine the impact of using virtual reality technology on the brain functioning of people with acquired head injury.” 

Hathaway and I glance at each other, both painfully aware of Kathleen Compton’s fatal head injury. Jane Worricker carries on.

“Right now, we’re looking at applications of this kind of technology to enhance recovery of spatial awareness and way-finding following the kind of brain trauma caused by road traffic accidents and the like.”

“I assume you work in collaboration with people in medicine or neuroscience?” Trust Hathaway to want to know all about it.

“Only in the sense that we need to make friends in medicine to get access to an MRI scanner. Other than that, I’m lucky; I actually did medical training back when Eve was a girl. I was a neurologist for a while, actually.” She pauses for a moment. “And before that, I was a cardiothoracic surgeon.” 

Even I know that’s an odd mix. “So you’re a cardiothoracic surgeon who also knows about brains _and_ you’re a professor of creative technologies? That must be pretty unusual?”

She looks ruefully at me. “You don’t know the half of it.”

I’m not sure what she’s getting at but right now I find I just want to keep her talking to me. “What made you shift focus from surgery, if you don’t mind me asking? It seems like an unusual choice.”

She gives me a complicated smile. “Well, it’s slowly getting better, but surgery as a profession is still run by middle-aged, posh, white men and surgeons have a whole mythology about themselves which is just arrogant, macho bullshit. They view themselves as gods—invincible, peerless gods, but nothing could be further from the truth. The level of depression and alcohol problems and so on amongst surgeons is terrible. And the narcissism! And cardiothoracic surgeons are the worst of the lot.”

“Not a lot of respect for female surgeons, then?” 

She looks at me, appraisingly. “Quite. Well, certainly back then. After a few years, I just couldn’t see the point, anymore, of putting up with being patronised and groped and all the rest of it.” Another pause. “That wasn’t the only reason I shifted focus, though. The truth is, I get bored if I’m not learning new things, and the cutting and sewing just got a bit dull, if I’m honest. What I’ve come to realise is that every few years I get intellectually restless and I start reading around a new subject. I tell myself that its just a bit of indulgence and that it won’t lead to anything substantial, but inevitably it turns into an empirical research project and then maybe a PhD . . . and that’s why my academic CV looks like a dog’s dinner.”

_Blimey_. “How many PhDs have you got, then?” 

She actually blushes a bit. “Two. At the moment. One investigating the biological underpinnings of way-finding and navigating, particularly the role of the hippocampus, and one looking at perceptual processing in immersive technology. Plus the medical degree and several years of surgical training and neurology training.” She shakes her head, a bit sheepishly. “I hesitate to even say this out loud, but over the last six months I’ve started to get fixated on environmental neuropsychology, particularly biological responses in the brain to contact with nature. It’s madness; it’s a completely different area to any of my current work.” She sighs. “I fear there’s a third PhD in the offing. It’s bloody inconvenient.” But her face has lit up and I can see that she’s even momentarily forgotten about her dead friend, if friends they were. She may be a witch, but she’s also an academic through and through by the sounds of it, with a life driven by curiosity and a yearning to know.

I nod towards Hathaway. “Sergeant Hathaway’s a bit the same. Brain as big as a planet. Has to be reading, researching, learning new things.”

She looks at him so approvingly it makes my heart swell and it’s not even me she’s looking at. He goes a bit pink around the ears and I don't really blame him: being admired by an intelligent, beautiful woman can do that to a man. Predictably, he frowns and says, “Nothing on your scale, Professor, I assure you. I dabble a bit, that’s all.”

She nods, sympathetically. “I imagine your job takes a lot of your time and energy. But you feel the drive to know, to understand? You have what we might call free-range curiosity?”

That’s him, alright. He’s bright red now and I do sympathise. I mean, it’s not like he’s comfortable being made a fuss over at the best of times, and then you add in the fact that she’s, well, lovely. 

He clears his throat. “As I said, just a bit of reading to keep me out of trouble.”

_A bit of reading! _ “Oh come on, James! Latin, Greek, poetry, history, theology, philosophy, pretty much any novel written in the last five hundred years. I’d say that’s more than a bit of reading.” I smile at Jane Worricker. “He can pretty much turn his brain to anything.” 

I’m not sure why I’m doing this, why I’m going on about his accomplishments like I’m a mother in an historical novel trying to land her daughter a husband. I suppose the bottom line is, I worry about him. And Jane Worricker seems, on the surface at least, like a nice person, though we don’t really know anything about her except that she’s a witch, and despite what he said back at the flat, that’s got to be an odd fit for someone with his background. But he needs someone, he really does, and God knows I despair of him ever sorting that out for himself. So occasionally I find myself just trying to ease the way for him a bit, just giving him a bit of a push. And she is beautiful. And yes, I am aware that it’s possible she’ll end up being a suspect, and yes, I know she’s probably too old for him, but sometimes I just can’t resist trying to make him a bit happier. Anyway, it’s not like he’ll actually do anything about it, but Jane Worricker is looking at him with open admiration, which is nice to see. I’m a bit envious, if I’m totally honest; but I’m a past-it old copper, so my days of dalliances with beautiful women I’m pretty sure are behind me. And I think there are signs Hathaway’s enjoying the experience, though it’s hard to tell with all those layers of reserve and formality.

Jane Worricker seems to approve of me saying nice things about my sergeant, anyway, because she gives me a smile so warm it could melt glaciers and then she turns back to Hathaway and says, “I absolutely love the idea of you being a scholar detective. You’re perfect for Oxford; completely perfect.” Even Hathaway can’t stop himself smiling at that.

Of course, the niceties can’t stave off the inevitable for ever. I tell her as gently as I can that Kathleen Compton was murdered, but it’s always brutal, breaking that sort of news. She stares at me for long seconds, trying to understand what I’ve told her. Then she makes a quiet keening noise and puts her hand over her mouth and tears silently roll down her cheeks. And still she stares at me with a look of such absolute heartbreak that it takes everything I’ve got not to look away.

Eventually, Hathaway hands her a tissue from a pack he produces from his jacket pocket, and says in a quiet way that brings to mind the priest he almost was, “Tell us about Kathleen. It would be a great help to us.”

Jane Worricker dabs at her eyes with the tissue and takes a swig of water from a bottle on her desk. “Kathleen was the most compassionate, principled person I have ever met. And she was funny, mischievous—intensely alive. And I always thought of her as a kind of undercover Goddess, a sort of Pagan superhero—she had this ability to make herself invisible. She did this really boring job for the council and dressed terribly in her everyday life, like a nun who’s just been released from a convent. I think mostly people didn’t even register her. But then she has, she _had_, this incredible creative, spiritual life that no one outside of the Ravens even knew about. You’ve been to her flat, I take it? You’ve seen her Goddess statues?”

“Did she make them?”

“Yes. Each time she experienced the Great Goddess in a ritual, each time she became the Great Goddess, she made a representation. Those sculptures are a record, the evidence of her journey, her power. She was every one of those aspects of the Goddess. She was magnificent, and she was utterly, utterly underestimated; particularly by men, of course. She liked that though. She saw it as part of her power—the ability to pass unnoticed through ordinary life.”

_Christ_. I think through what she’s told us. “We didn’t see a workshop or kiln or anything like that at the flat.”

“No. She had a workshop on Ann Sherwood’s smallholding. Ann’s another of the Ravens; she grows fruit and veg and keeps chickens on a bit of land out near Islip.”

I can tell that Hathaway’s got something brewing, so I stop talking.

“You loved Kathleen.” He states what’s obvious rather than posing it as a question.

“Yes. Very much.”

“Were you in love with her?”

She looks at him, steadily. “Not in the way you mean, Sergeant. We weren’t sexual or romantic partners, not in the usual way. But the women of the Five Ravens are my sisters, my mothers, my daughters. They’re my lovers; my friends. What I feel for them, the bonds we’ve developed, the trust, the things we’ve experienced together—I think you could say we’re in love with each other.” 

I don’t know why, but this declaration stops me in my tracks. I’ve never thought that you could be in love with people that way, without the sex or romance. There’s something about it that’s calling for my attention, but now isn’t the time, so I have to file it away for future contemplation.

Hathaway carries on. “When did you last see Kathleen?”

“We had an Imbolc celebration on the night of the 2nd of February. Imbolc marks the very first stirrings of spring. It’s all about the re-emergence of green shoots after the earth has slept through the winter; the relief, the joy that there is life again. And we mark the transformation of the Goddess from Crone to Maiden. It was a happy night.”

“Where did you meet for Imbolc?” I stumble a bit over the pronunciation.

She hesitates for the first time.

“Professor Worricker?”

She sighs and shakes her head. “When we formed the Five Ravens Coven, we bought a small piece of woodland together—just a few acres. We do all our ritual work there. I’ve never told anyone about it and I’m sure none of the other Ravens have, either. It’s our secret world, our sacred place, our refuge. Do you have to know where it is, Inspector?”

Now it’s my turn to hesitate and I can feel Hathaway watching me because, of course, as police officers investigating a murder, we have the right to know everything. But right now I can’t see that we need to know, though it’s possible that will change as the investigation progresses. I shake my head. “Not at this point. If we can conduct the investigation without knowing, we will, but I can’t make you any promises.”

She looks down at her silver ring and straightens it on her finger. “Thank you.” 

I glance at Hathaway to see if he disapproves—he’s been known to express the opinion that I can be too indulgent with attractive women in investigations—but his expression is giving nothing away. He looks back at Jane Worricker. “Maybe you could tell us how you met Kathleen?”

“We met at a moot, eight or nine years ago. She’d recently moved to Oxford and was wanting to explore Paganism. I don’t think she’d done anything more than read about it before she came to the moot.”

I glance at Hathaway again but he shrugs, so I say, “I don’t think we know what a moot is.”

“Oh, it’s a social event, an informal meet-up of witches, druids, shamanic practitioners and so on. And the Pagan-curious—people taking their first steps on their Pagan path. Moots mostly happen in pubs or cafes. It’s a place to connect with old friends but also a safe way of meeting people who might want to join the community. You won’t be surprised to learn that Paganism attracts some rather odd types, and you don’t want your first meeting with a new person being the moment they enter your sacred space.”

I get this wild idea that she’s using entering your sacred space as some kind of euphemism and my confusion must show on my face because she gives me a watery smile. “I mean the space you practice in, the room or the barn or the woodland clearing; more specifically, the protective circle you cast, within which, you perform rituals and spells.”

“Right.”

She looks directly at me. “Though there is a long tradition of sex magic amongst witches.”

_Bloody hell_. I glance at Hathaway, who’s carefully studying his shoes and apparently has nothing to contribute, all of a sudden. It’s Jane Worricker, herself, who rescues us in the end.

“Shall I tell you more about meeting Kathleen?”

“Please do.”

“I was in a coven—the Blackthorn Coven. Most covens have thirteen members and we had twelve, and rather more men than is usual, and certainly more than I would have preferred. I got to know Kathleen over a period of a few months and she started coming to the coven as a visitor. Eventually, she was initiated and became the thirteenth witch. We were in the Blackthorn together for three years.”

She goes quiet and a frown settles on her face. Hathaway gently prompts her. “What happened?”

She looks wearily at him. “The men in the coven, of whom there were eight, started to throw their weight around.”

My heart sinks at the many possible meanings of this. “In what way?”

“Well, in terms of the magical work we did as a coven. The men, encouraged mostly by Graham Howard—he was initiated into the coven the year before Kathleen—got very interested in using magic as a means to cultivate personal power. You have to understand, the women, including myself and Kathleen, well, the bedrock of our practice, the thing that gave it meaning, was our connection with the natural world. We worked to build a sense of interconnection with each other and with every aspect of the natural world; every animal, every plant, every rock. The power we generated only had meaning in terms of our experience of the Great Mother Earth—and it was rooted in love. We had absolutely no interest in power in terms of personal gain or influence.” She shakes her head. “It was a duotheistic coven—we worked with the Great Goddess and the Horned God, so they needed the five women, and we objected to the way things were going . . . and it all got very unpleasant.” She sighs. “There’s nothing like been told by a group of men that you’re the wrong sort of woman, or that you’d be a better woman if you’d just do as you were told. Outrageous! We women were bringing the power of the Great Goddess into the circle and they honestly thought they had the right to control us!”

Hathaway frowns. “Did it ever get threatening or violent?”

She immediately sees what he’s thinking. She shakes her head. “No. Nothing like that. Unpleasant and disappointing, yes, but not scary. Anyway, that was a long time ago. We still regularly see them at moots. They’re standoffish, but never threatening.”

“I take it you’re no longer in the Blackthorn Coven?”

She actually smiles as she answers him. “No; we withdrew.”

“What do you mean, _withdrew_?”

“Well, the women started meeting secretly to talk about how unhappy we were. After a few tries at changing things, it became clear to us that the coven had been irreparably tainted and we wanted nothing more to do with it. It was a miserable time in some ways, but there was also a sense of excitement because it was obvious that the five of us longed for the same kind of coven, the same kind of sisterly companionship. So we decided to leave. We did a ritual of separation—we made a thick cord from materials that represented our connections with the Blackthorn Coven—blackthorn twigs, of course, but also materials to represent each of the male members of the coven—hairs, clothing fibres and so on. We wove the cord . . . and then we severed it, severed what bound us to the coven and to the men . . . and we buried the two cut halves twenty miles apart. Then each of us wrote a letter of withdrawal and that was that. Well, magically, that was that. Of course, all hell broke loose when they got the letters, but there was nothing they could do except a lot of complaining and blaming. We just let them get on with it and quietly formed our own coven.”

“The Five Ravens.”

“Yes.” Then the horror of the current situation washes over her again. “_Four_ Ravens.” She closes her eyes. “Oh my beautiful, beloved sister.” 

Hathaway looks at me. He’s clearly not finding this any easier than I am. We’ve seen so many horrors and met so many terrible people, and I know I’ve toughened up over the years—I can take a lot in my stride these days. I’m not so sure about Hathaway; he still gets pretty knocked about by some of the cases. But even I still have feelings, and there are cases that still get to me, and this is turning out to be one of them. I feel glad I’ve got Hathaway here with me, though. There’s a sort of bond, I suppose you’d call it, between us, after all these years. We’ve been in a lot of tough situations together and I suppose at this point I just know that I can rely on him. I steel myself to carry on with the questions. “Jane, can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Kathleen?”

She’s quiet for a long time and I’m not even sure she’s heard me, but eventually she opens her eyes and looks at me, apologetically. “I really can’t.” She’s still thinking, though. “Well, except, there was an ex-husband, back in Cardiff, where Kathleen originally came from. She never talked about him but I’m pretty certain it wasn’t a happy time of her life. I got the impression she might have moved to Oxford to get away from him, though I don't know where I got that impression from because she never said that to me. Sometimes though, you work things out from the shape of the no-go areas in a person’s life story, don’t you?”

Well, she’s not wrong about that, is she?

I’m lost in my own thoughts for a moment and Hathaway startles me by asking her what she was doing last night between the hours of eight and ten. He looks miserable having to ask, and I find myself praying to a God I don’t even believe in that she has a decent alibi, because I have been utterly charmed by this woman and it’ll break what’s left of my poor, withered heart if it turns out she’s got anything to do with this sorry business. 

To my relief, she tells us she was at a university public engagement event aimed at making her department’s research interesting and accessible to the general public of Oxford. As the head of her research group, she was on stage for the whole evening, introducing speakers and fielding questions. So, she was in central Oxford and visible to about fifty people when Kathleen Compton was being murdered. Hathaway looks as relieved as I feel.

She doesn’t know anything about Kathleen’s ex-husband, and we’ve been talking to her for over an hour now, so it’s time to leave the woman in peace, if peace is what you can a call it, given the circumstances. We get to our feet and as I shake her hand I find myself apologising to her even though I haven’t done her any wrong. 

“I’m sorry those men made your life so difficult. And I’m sorry that in all likelihood another one has taken your friend away.”

She looks at me with kindness, tenderness even, despite her pain, and I can’t look away from her. She takes hold of my hand with both of hers and I see that her silver ring has a tiny raven on it with a red stone for its eye—a ruby or a garnet, maybe. 

“Inspector, there are good men. The bad ones don’t negate the good ones. You are a good man; I can feel it; I can see it. I don’t doubt it.” 

Well that’s got my heart rate up. She nods towards Hathaway, still holding onto my hand. “Both of you are kind men with good souls, and at any other time I would rejoice, knowing you are in the world.”

_Bloody hell fire_. The honest truth is, I don’t want to leave her. I feel reluctant to take my hand from hers and walk away from her. Partly, it’s just the protectiveness I feel towards pretty much anyone newly arrived in our dark world of trauma and death. Partly, I know, it’s because she’s attractive and she’s made me feel noticed and admired in a way I haven’t felt for years. And partly, it’s because I have a thousand questions I’d like to ask her about what it’s like to be part of a coven, what it’s like to perform rituals and cast spells and whatever else being a witch entails. It’s an alien world to me and I’m fascinated by it. 

But she’s shocked and bereft, and I have a murder to solve, and regardless of all that, she doesn’t owe me anything: any explanations, any insights into her world, any attention or appreciation. Hathaway also shakes her hand, which for him, in a work situation like this, is not actually that common and which tells me plenty about his own reaction to Jane Worricker. 

We walk out of the building and don’t say a word to each other until we reach a small patch of grass with a few bare trees in the centre. Hathaway stops and looks back in the direction of Jane Worricker’s office. “The Divine Feminine.”

“You’re not wrong.” 

We look at each other for a moment, both a bit gobsmacked by the whole encounter. I pat him on the arm. “Thank God she’s got a good alibi. I don’t think I could have borne it if . . .”

He nods. “I know what you mean. We will have to check out her alibi, though. And maybe we should be thanking a more female deity?” 

I give him a little smile. I’m not in the habit of thanking any kind of deity, but I do quite like the idea of sitting in a senior officers’ meeting and saying _Thank Goddess for that_ when the overtime budget looks like it’s going to stretch to cover the month—just to see the reaction. I’m just about to get us moving back to the car but I can see Hathaway’s still working away at something in his head.

“James? Something on your mind?”

“Yes. Maybe. I’m not sure.” He doesn’t look worried, but there’s definitely something he can’t quite get his head round. He frowns. “Jane Worricker. She wasn’t flirting with us—I’ve seen enough women flirt with you over the years, sir, and I know that wasn’t what she was up to. I didn’t feel manipulated and I don’t think she was trying to butter us up or influence us about the case. But there was something going on back there, or something about her. Usually, telling someone that her friend’s been murdered would leave me feeling pretty awful; and I do feel sombre, of course, but at the same time . . . I don’t know, I feel . . . positive; appreciated; noticed; like she looked at me and for some reason she approved of what she saw.” He looks a bit startled that he’s said all this out loud. “That probably sounds like madness.”

I find myself patting his arm, again. “No, James, oddly enough, it doesn’t. I don’t know what’s going on, here, but I choose to believe that it’s something good.”

He looks at me with interest. “You have faith, sir?”

_Trust him to go down that path_. “Steady on, Sergeant. No need to get all giddy.” And with that, I cross the road to the car.

We’re just pulling into the car park at the back of the nick when Hathaway’s phone rings. Someone at the end of Kathleen’s road has found a stone statue of a naked woman, lying in some bushes at the bottom of their garden: a stone statue with blood on its base.


	3. Friday 21st February - Monday 24th February: The End of the Case

It all unfolds very quickly throughout Friday and on Saturday morning, and by Saturday lunchtime it’s all over except for the paperwork. Forensics find a lovely set of prints on the basalt Goddess, and low and behold, a matching set of prints belonging to one David Wilbur is sitting waiting for us in IDENT1, the national database. David Wilbur, it turns out, is an IT support officer at Oxfordshire County Council with a couple of Common Assaults to his name. He was employed by the council six months ago on a temporary contract because of difficulties filling vacant posts. Clearly they were in so much of a hurry to fill the vacancies, they didn’t check him out, and he certainly didn’t declare his convictions.

We pull him in first thing on Saturday and it all comes tumbling out. He’s based in a different building to the one Kathleen worked in but had come into contact with her a couple of months ago when a new online HR portal was being tested. He’d thought she was _a bit plain_ but had had an idea that she _might scrub up well_, the arrogant bastard. The one time Kathleen’s invisibility cloak failed her, poor lass. He’d asked her out a couple of weeks ago and she’d said no thank you . . . and that had made him very unhappy. 

On Thursday night, fuelled by a few tins of lager and feeling lonely and sorry for himself, Wilbur had looked up her address on that same HR system and then had gone to have a look at where she lived. He swears blind he’d just planned to have a nose around, but he’d found a gate in the high, wooden fence surrounding her back garden and it’d opened when he’d tried it, so he’d gone in—but she’d been there, kneeling in front of the cherry tree, lighting candles round a stone Goddess. She’d confronted him and he’d panicked, knowing that if she called the police it’d end up with him losing his job, and possibly worse. He was worried that another conviction would have left him looking at a custodial sentence. Well, he got that right.

So, in the end it was nothing weird, nothing Pagan, that did for Kathleen Compton. Just another story of a man wanting something, someone, and being unwilling to accept he had no right. Wilbur was desperate to confess when we brought him in. He’d been fine with a bit of stalking but was way out of his depth with murder. Well, we’ve had to charge him with manslaughter because there’s no evidence he actually intended to kill her. I’m not so sure, but manslaughter is a reasonable result: he won’t be troubling any other women for a long time.

* * *

On Monday morning I pop into the Department of Creative Technologies to tell Jane Worricker the news but she’s away at a symposium in Geneva for a few days, so I leave her a note. A couple of days later she leaves me a message on my mobile while I’m in a meeting, thanking me and Hathaway for finding Kathleen’s killer, and for what she refers to as our _sensitivity about personal matters_.

I think about her every now and again over the next couple of weeks, and half wonder about going to see her, or sending Hathaway, even, but we get another case and February turns into March, and it never happens. I find my mind returning more than once to what she said about love, about her being in love with the Ravens even though there was nothing sexual or romantic going on between them. It’s a new idea for me, that you might call something like that _being in love_. But I could see how strongly she felt about them, how bonded to them she was, how essential they seemed to be to each other’s happiness. If that’s not being in love, then what is?

* * *

Hathaway and I don’t really talk about the case once its over. Our next case starts almost immediately and takes all of our attention and energy, which is only right. One night though, we grab a quick pint together after a frustrating day in which we haven’t solved the murder but have had a complaint made about us (completely unjustified!), which has meant we’ve also had a bollocking from Innocent. I find Hathaway reading a battered paperback when I return from the bar with our drinks.

“What you got there?”

He shows me the cover: _The White Goddess_ by Robert Graves. He turns to a page with the corner folded over and reads: “Poetry began in the matriarchal age, and derives its magic from the moon, not from the sun.” He seems very pleased with this and smiles at me—the one good thing in a bloody awful day.


	4. Tuesday 18th March: Late morning

“Check your post, sir.”

I’m just back from a briefing on some inter-departmental working initiative the Chief Super’s pushing, God help us. Hathaway’s sitting behind his desk, waving what looks like a letter at me.

“It’s an invitation. You’ll have one, too.” He’s looking a lot more animated than when I left him, and it can’t be down to the eighty-seven-page report on electronic record keeping I handed him before I went off to my meeting.

On my desk is the usual little pile of forms and leaflets and so on that counts as post for a DI. But in amongst all that there’s a white, hand-written envelope addressed to me. Hathaway watches as I open it. Inside there’s a single sheet of thick, white paper with untidy writing on one side. I read it out loud.

_Dear Inspector Lewis,_

_The Five Raven’s Coven will meet for a full moon ritual on Saturday 22nd March, to celebrate and mourn Kathleen, our beloved sister. As a sign of our gratitude for the care you took when your path converged with hers, we would like to invite you to the feast that will follow our ritual work. We very much hope you will join us at 10pm. _

_Blessed Be,_

_Jane Worricker_

Below her signature she’s drawn a map with a little cross-hatched rectangle labelled _park car here_, some map coordinates, and a path showing the way from the parking space to a circle in which she’s drawn a raven. The circle is surrounded by tiny trees.

I glance at Hathaway who’s managing to look stunned and excited at the same time.

I wave my invitation at him. “You got the same?”

He grins. “Yup.”

I can’t stop staring at it. “Bloody hell.”

“My thoughts, entirely, sir. Should we go, do you think?”

I grin back at him. “Well, it’d be rude not to, wouldn’t it?”


	5. Saturday 22nd March: Full Moon

I can’t believe I’m doing this; _we’re _ doing this. I know we’re only going to the feast, not the ritual, but even so—we’re going to meet a bunch of witches in the middle of some woods at night, on the full moon! I mean, that’s not something you get to do very often, is it?! I give Hathaway a ring at about 6pm. “Sergeant, what the hell do you wear to meet a coven?”

“Good question, sir. I’m going casual but not scruffy, and warm layers. By ten pm it’s going to be six degrees at most—that says woolly jumper and a decent coat to me.” 

“Right. Thanks, James. I’ll pick you up about nine, yes?”

* * *

We find the parking spot easily enough through a combination of the sat nav and Hathaway interpreting Jane Worricker’s hand-drawn map. We’ve been driving down deserted country lanes for the last quarter of an hour. None of the lanes have street lighting, but the moon is full and steadily climbing, and we can see our surroundings pretty well.

There are already a couple of cars in the parking space and we squeeze in next to them. Behind one of the cars we spot a narrow gap in the hedge which has been marked with some little crystals and pieces of mirror tied to branches at eye level with twine. We both switch on our torches and go through the hedge into the woods. It’s much, much darker in amongst the trees than it was out in the lane. The wood seems to be mostly ancient deciduous trees like oak and ash, so there’s no leaf canopy at this time of year, but the trees are so big and so close together, the moonlight can’t penetrate. But the crystals and glass and bits of shiny metal hung along the way sparkle and glisten in our torchlight and we manage to slowly pick our way through the dark woods. After ten minutes or so we start hearing female voices somewhere off in the distance, and then suddenly, we’re at the edge of a clearing which had been completely invisible until we stepped into it because of the dense thicket of trees and holly and briar roses surrounding it. And there they are, the Ravens, lounging on rugs and blankets and cushions around a small fire, with everything lit by silvery moonlight. Hathaway and I both gasp at the sight—it is truly magical.

The Ravens spot us as soon as we step into the clearing and they get to their feet and take a few steps towards us. As we start to walk in their direction I can see that they’ve got candles dotted about, and bottles of wine and it looks like something’s cooking in a pot over the fire. The four women are wrapped in shawls, and yes, they’re wearing the long dresses I imagined witches would wear, but none of them are dressed in black and in fact the whole scene is more colourful and festive than I thought it would be, particularly given that they were meeting to say goodbye to their beloved fifth Raven.

It’s only when Hathaway and I are a just a few yards away from their little camp that I see that everything—the fire, the rugs and cushions and hampers and the Ravens themselves—everything is surrounded by a large circle, marked in the grass by hundreds of small, white stones. Jane Worricker, who’s wearing a long, green dress and has her hair loose and if I’m honest, looks bewitching—there’s no other word for it, beckons to us. The two of us come to a halt opposite her, with just a thin curve of stones between us. She smiles.

“Good evening, Inspector; Sergeant. We’re very glad you both came.”

“We were touched to get your invitation. And please, I’m Robbie, and this is James.”

The other women have joined her, lining the inside of the circle, opposite us. Jane introduces them to us—Megan, Natasha, and Ann—and then she and each of the women greet me and James in turn. Each one of them looks at me and then James, and says: “Blessed Be, Robbie. Blessed Be, James,” and the hairs on the back of my neck prickle—not in a bad way, but like there’s electricity building up in me.

Then Jane asks us if we want to enter the circle, and what’s odd about it is that I know it’s only a few stones in a line but I feel like I could no more step over that line without their permission than I could fly to the moon. Of course, we say yes, and Megan, the youngest woman, who I think is about thirty, steps right up to me on the other side of the circle and asks:

“Do you carry any ill will towards us in your heart, Robbie?”

What a question. “No, lass. None at all.”

“Will you leave your cares outside the circle for a while, Robbie?”

“With pleasure.”

She smiles at me. “You are most welcome.”

Then she turns to James and asks him the same things, and I watch him answer solemnly and carefully and I feel a wave of affection for him. He’s not always an easy man, that’s for sure, but like Jane Worricker said on that day in her office, he’s a good man, and there’s no one I’d rather have standing next to me on this side of the circle.

“Do you carry any ill will towards us in your heart, James?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Will you leave your cares outside the circle for a while, James?”

“To the best of my ability.”

Megan smiles, sweetly, at him and says, “You are most welcome, James,” and his face lights up and he smiles back at her and I’m not sure if it’s just feeling so welcome that’s got to him or being welcomed by her in particular, but my sergeant looks happier than I’ve seen him in a long, long time, and apparently that’s enough to put a grin on my face, too.

The next thing that happens is that each of the four women picks up a single stone to create a narrow gap in the circle. Jane beckons us in and we walk through from the ordinary world into the Raven’s sacred space and we watch as they place the stones back to complete the circle again. And I have to say, it’s the weirdest thing, but it feels like they’ve just safely locked the door to keep the world at bay for a while.

Once we’re inside the circle, it all gets a bit less witchy and a lot more relaxed. We’re both settled onto piles of rugs and cushions, and I can’t drink much because I’m driving, but I have half a glass of red wine and we drink to each other, and we drink to the Mother Earth, and we drink to Kathleen Compton.

It turns out that Megan is a post-doctoral researcher specialising in something to do with anchoresses. I don’t even know what anchoresses are, or were, but James practically yelped with excitement when she told us and so they’ve got themselves comfy in a nest of blankets and are deep in animated conversation. I chat to Natasha and Ann for a long time about how they care for the woods, mostly, and then they move close to the fire and curl up together, quietly talking to each other. I lie back on my pile of cushions and just look up at the moon which is now high above us though still not quite directly overhead. It’s so bright that every person and bottle and basket within the circle is casting a shadow in its silvery light. 

The Ravens haven’t said anything about what their ritual for Kathleen involved, but at the far side of the fire, away from where we’re sitting, I can see there’s a box or basket with an altar laid out on it, and in the centre of it is a Goddess, a large black stone Goddess, wearing a silver moon crown and wrapped, tightly, in white cloth of some sort. A shroud, maybe? It’s odd that something can look, well, so spooky, but at the same time be sort of comforting or reassuring because it’s obvious she’s been so carefully wrapped up and looked after.

After a while, Jane Worricker comes over and hands me a bowl of some sort of stew and sits down next to me, sharing my little cushion nest. It must be turned eleven and I didn’t eat much of anything before I came out because, well, I was a bit nervous, and anyway, they’d said we’d be having a feast. So I’m starving and I tuck in. It’s piping hot and tastes great.

“This is really good. What is it?”

“Venison and wild mushroom stew.”

“Venison?” I get an image of her running through the woods, bow and arrow in hand, hot on the heels of a majestic stag. I really wouldn’t put it past her.

When I look up from my food, she’s smiling at me. “What were you expecting us to eat? Twigs and berries?”

“No! Nothing like that. Well, eye of newt, maybe?”

As soon as it's out of my mouth, I could kick myself, but it seems like I’ve hit on a seam of classic witch humour and we have a very daft conversation about how Sainsbury’s don’t stock wool of bat anymore, but Waitrose can be still be relied on for all one’s hell-broth needs.

After a while we stop talking and sit in companionable silence, watching James and Megan, who are still deep in conversation. There’s a platter of fruit and nuts in front of them and every now and again Megan pulls a grape off a bunch and hands it to James, who eats it absentmindedly as they talk.

Jane Worricker leans closer to me and whispers, “James seems to have settled in well.”

“Aye. It’s good to see him having a nice time. It doesn’t always come naturally to him.”

“You care about him.” It’s not a question.

“Yes.”

“I’m not surprised. You and James are the perfect balance for each other, aren’t you? He’s air; you’re earth.”

I’m not sure what to say to that.

“I can tell the two of you have been through a lot together.” 

Well, she’s not wrong there. “We have.” 

“You trust him.” 

“With my life.” 

“And him, you.” 

“I hope so.” 

“It wasn’t a question, Robbie. I can see that the two of you are connected in some way that is absolutely not trivial.” Again, she’s not asking. 

I look over at James and it occurs to me that no one alive knows me better than him. It’s an unsettling thought. “We may be connected, as you say, but what he really needs is a lass.” 

She takes a sip of her wine. “Maybe, yes, maybe no. I don’t think that would make the bond you have with James any less important though, would it?” 

I don’t answer her, but a little voice at the back of my mind whispers _I hope not_.

I feel her shrug. “Anyway, enough of James for now. What about you, Robbie? Do you need a lass?” 

I can actually feel myself blushing and I’m grateful it’s dark out here, despite the moon and the fire. If I’m honest, I’m a bit flustered, and although I’m pretty certain she’s asking in a general kind of way, a less realistic bit of me has a mad moment thinking it could just be possible she has a more personal interest. It seems very unlikely, though, and I give her a sensible reply. “It’s been a long time, a difficult time. Maybe I’m a bit past all that now. I’m hardly love’s young dream.” 

She laughs. “No, I wouldn’t accuse you of that. On the other hand, we witches have a rather different relationship to aging than most people, I think. We worship the Goddess as the Crone as well as the Maiden and we actively seek out the wisdom and experience that comes with age.”

She finds my hand in the dark and squeezes it for a moment. “I’m very glad you and James have each other. You do such a dark and difficult job: you need the light of companionship, of love, to illuminate your path. What I will say though is that if my life with the Ravens is teaching me anything, it’s that the human heart is so much bigger, has so much greater capacity for love, than I ever imagined was possible. You might surprise yourself.”

I squeeze her hand back. “Maybe I will, lass.”

At that, she pushes herself up off the cushions, stands up, and pulls me to my feet. Megan does the same with James and brings him over to stand near to me, and Natasha and Ann come and join us, too. Ann, who I reckon is in her early seventies and has long, white hair flowing over her shoulders, reaches out and takes hold of one of James’ hands and one of mine, as we stand next to each other.

“It’s time for you both to go.”

James and I look at each other—it’s clear we’re both sad it’s over, but he’s nothing if not polite: “If you’re packing up, we can give you a hand to carry things back to your cars.”

She smiles. “Thank you, but no. We’re going to stay the night, tonight.”

I feel a stab of longing, up behind my ribs; a yearning to stay, to be here with them in their circle. But before I can start to feel too bad, the four women surround me and James, herding us so that our shoulders are pressed together, and then they put their arms tightly round both of us and lean in close and each start whispering to us:

“We will welcome you into our circle again, Robbie. We promise.”

“James, we will miss you and we look forward to meeting you in the wild woods again.”

“Robbie, take care of James; care for him as the Great Mother wishes.”

James, take care of Robbie; look after him as the Great Goddess wishes.” 

And then they step back from us and open up the circle again and we pass through into the ordinary world, and my heart feels heavy. They replace the four stones behind us and they point us in the right direction so we’ll be able to find the gap in the thicket and the way back to the car. As we walk slowly across the clearing to the edge of the trees, the Ravens say in unison to us:

“Blessed Be, Robbie. Blessed Be, James. You are much loved.”

* * *

As I get ready for bed I empty all my pockets and in with the car keys and phone and handkerchief, I find something else. It’s a tiny Goddess figure carved out of smooth white stone that’s flecked with pale grey. She rests comfortably in the palm of my hand and she feels cool and smooth as I rub my thumb back and forth over her belly. I know it’s practically the middle of the night but I phone James.

“James, have you found a little present?”

“No?”

“Check your coat pockets.”

A few seconds later a message arrives with a photo attached: a tiny black statue of the Goddess, standing in the centre of James’ pale palm.

“I take it you have one too, sir?”

“Yes, a tiny white one. She’s beautiful.” I contemplate her. “James, do you think this means the Ravens have cast a spell on us? Do you think we’re somehow bound to the coven now?”

He’s quiet for a moment, then he says, “Do you know what? Honestly, I can think of far worse fates.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean—don’t you feel good? After this evening, don’t you feel alive? And like life will be richer or happier or better in some other, indefinable, way now the Ravens are in it?”

I suppose he’s right; I do. “I know what you mean. I think we’re pretty lucky to have met them.”

He yawns down the phone. It’s gone two in the morning and it’s been a big day and we both need some rest. 

“Good night, James. Sleep well.”

“Good night, sir. You too.”

“Call me Robbie, will you? Seems like the right time.”

“Good night, Robbie.” He sounds pleased.

* * *

I pop the little Goddess under my pillow and switch the bedside lamp off. It’s very late and I’m tired and I drift down into sleep almost immediately. And then I’m in the dark and James is there with me and we’re lounging on something comfortable and leaning against each other. It’s not a scary darkness, it's more of a moonless night in the woods kind of darkness. 

I dream about the wild creatures of the woods—the foxes and the deer and the goshawks. I dream about Jane Worricker and Val meeting and hugging each other. I dream about James and Megan, cuddling and joyful. I dream about me and James and the reassurance, the sense of rightness, of having him near me. And they’re happy dreams, expansive dreams; dreams about possibilities. And all through the night, as I dream, I can hear the flapping of wings somewhere close by; I can feel the air being moved around me by the beating of great, dark wings—Ravens’ wings.

**Author's Note:**

> There are a couple of literary references in the story:
> 
> In the pub, James is reading The White Goddess by Robert Graves - a book-length essay about myth and poetry
> 
> Robbie and Jane Worricker joke about the contents of the witches' cauldron from Macbeth


End file.
